I do not understand or comprehend the value of AI when it comes to creativity and art. It seems bizarre that there are people (mainly vested interests) who actually believe, on a linguistic level, that a non-sentient apparatus could produce something that we could justifiably be defined as “art”. But, as the old saying goes, the grift is real, and it’ll likely continue until enough money is made.
One of the big criticisms of AI art is that it infringes all manner of copyright laws, and that the final product is, in essence, something that the AI thinks you want rather than something that’s unique and expressive in its own right. The problem with the new Netflix sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, is that you watch it with a sense of scepticism as to whether it would actually pass the Turing Test. It too often feels like the amalgamated product of a data module that’s had the previous three Beverly Hills Cop movies, and a couple of TMZ editorials, fed into it and been charged with making a movie.
Australian commercials director Mark Malloy is the actual human person behind the tiller, but it’s hard to deduce as to whether or not he’s acting up to some kind of algorithmic overlord who’s calling the creative shots. The film combines brazen fan service and eye-rolling nostalgia callbacks with a Rizla-thin plotline about violently corrupt cops lording over the enlightened burg of Beverly Hills. Kevin Bacon is in the house to do his best stock bad dude.
Eddie Murphy slips back into the famous varsity jacket and stonewash jeans as the lovable face of police fascism, Axel Foley, a man whose predilection for big guns, civic destruction and above-the-law revenge missions feel queasily out of synch with modern times. The plotline is a beat-for-beat rehash of Martin Brest’s still-scintillating 1981 original, with even many of that film’s music cues dredged up once more lest viewers don’t get the memo.
Judge Reinhold returns as the puppydog NRA nut, Billy Rosewood, who’s hung up his cuffs for the LAPD and is now working as a private investigator. A reunion is forged when he calls Axel to inform him that his estranged criminal lawyer daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige), is in trouble, as one of her defendants may blow the whistle on some crooked stuff happening on the other side of the thin blue line.
All the old friends are wheeled out for their moment: John Ashton as “I’m-too-old-for-this-shit” Chief Taggart; Bronson Pinchot’s loopily-accented helpmeet, Serge; and Paul Reiser as Axel’s eternally-disapproving old buddy Jeffrey. Yet along with the actors, many of the scenes are retooled for the service of this legacy remix, albeit with massively diminishing returns. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is bussed in as the volatile Det Abbot, with whom Axel has to work, and the pair just don’t have any chemistry going for them. Like, zero.
Where Foley was once wiley and perspicacious, now he’s an egregious, accident-prone goofball, a character shift which undermines the original film’s trenchant tactic of having the political presumptions of various white characters undercut by reality. Murphy has been vocal in the past about his scepticism when it came to partaking in Cop sequels, particularly the utterly monstrous part three, yet it’s hard to see what, on paper, would’ve changed his mind with this one.
If nostalgia porn is your thing, and you like this new fad of having the slightly tired stars of 1980s blockbusters uncomfortably reprise the roles that made them famous, then there’s much here for the taking. Yet if the spectacle of a film high-fiving itself from across the decades makes you feel physically nauseous, and one that opts for minor variations on a tried-and-tested formula over doing and saying something, anything even vaguely interesting, then hop into your busted blue Chevy Nova, hightail it past the Beverly Hills city limits and never look back.
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ANTICIPATION.
The first BHC film in 30 years, but one which follows one of the worst films ever made. 3
ENJOYMENT.
Murphy’s game performance just about drags this one across the finish line. 2
IN RETROSPECT.
Too much of this glossy, generic cop flick falls flat. Stick with the original and the best 1
Directed by
Mark Molloy
Starring
Eddie Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon
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